


Uninscribed

by Ayulsa (execharmonious)



Category: Loveless
Genre: Blood, M/M, Magic, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-18
Updated: 2010-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/execharmonious/pseuds/Ayulsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some bonds are not so easy to break. A counterpart to the many fics I've seen where Ritsuka claims Soubi as the Loveless fighter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uninscribed

_What God has joined together, let no man put asunder._

The lines of the name flickered over his throat, like a lighter-spark come and gone so fast that one wonders if their eyes had merely deceived; a weak little spell, barely alive, that did not burn with the fierceness of Seimei's convictions but only, for all the desperation the boy had poured into it, with a faltering faint hope.

_It won't work, Soubi had said. Once a name is written, it can't be unwritten. Those are just the rules._

But it's not fair, Ritsuka had responded, with the petulance of a little child and the budding possessiveness of a sacrifice coming into his own. He shouldn't be able to hold you, not after this.... If you're mine as you say, then let me try!

So Soubi had let him try, without hope or conviction in his heart.

He was hard, oddly, hard from the last blistering shards of Seimei as they rose to the surface and tore through his soul; the fragmented bond tantalising his nerves for just a moment before its embers dimmed, leaving Soubi with a twisting ache in the pit of his stomach and a lost little moan on his lips.

In the wake of that moan, a spreading coldness overtook him; as if to finally voice that distance, finally speak its unformed name, had given it a more solid reality, and open him up bare to all that he had lost.

The coldness; and then, the rush of blood, hot to his skin, hot like fever, hot like the choked ragged gasps that precede death.

_You are **Loveless**, he'd spoken, making up the words in impromptu ritual, the air heavy on that name. Be unbound from your former name, released from all former ties.... You are mine and mine alone._

Soubi had felt his life force slipping away, and the strength that came in to replace it was not nearly enough to hold him.

When the first few drops beaded along the lines of the old name, Ritsuka thought little of it. Bleeding one last time, he thought, a cry of vain protest. But all that would be erased soon, as the magic took hold. Soubi would not have to bleed again.

But hours passed, and the blood would not stop flowing, the name-scars swollen with the heat of sickness. Soubi's hands fluttered intermittently to his throat, clutching the air in agony.

It would just take time. Eventually it would stop, eventually the old wound would clot and heal.

Wouldn't it?

A cold sweat pushed to the surface of Ritsuka's skin. He was struck, suddenly, by the queasy realisation that he didn't know anything about these things. He'd thought it could work on faith, watched the wordspell battles play out and seen how the weft and flow of that hidden world was driven by what you believed. He'd thought that if only he _believed_ enough, he could bend the rules, break them even.

Wasn't that how magic worked, in the stories? Had he not believed enough? Was he not Seimei's equal in heart and soul, could he never be?

He felt Soubi's hand on his shoulder in reassurance, as if in response to his unspoken thoughts. More likely, his pained expression had given it away. Soubi's fingers were slick with blood, and Ritsuka could see the smears on his throat where he'd touched his old name.

"It's not... that you're not good enough, Ritsuka."

Ritsuka's eyebrows furrowed, tears springing hot to his eyes.

"Something bigger than us decides."

Soubi's hand slipped from Ritsuka's shoulder, his eyes falling closed. For the first time since the ordeal had begun, a strange sense of peace seemed to pervade his features, through the pallor and the pain.

_Beloved had never been so _close, _before or since, the dark smooth scent of Seimei's body thickening the air between them. It seemed to sink into his pores, the very essence of Seimei penetrating him in tiny little bubbles of warmth, heating his skin, fueling a lifetime's worth of longing that would resonate in every cell thereafter._

Black curls of hair fell around his face in a graceful dance, soft strands tickling his cheeks in pale contrast to sharp dark knife-heat, the tenderest touch with which Seimei would ever gift him.

Still it defined his world: this and a thousand other signs wilfully misread, this and the rise and fall of his sleeping sacrifice's chest, the subtle twitch of his ears, the long rough hand that bore his name. Still his world was painted in these colours, dim shades, fragments of sun; womblike hues, teasing his longing heart with muted hints of shelter.

The fighter's world had long since narrowed to a single point of light.

His eyes now beheld only that distant light, far-off, vacant; the word, the name, might or might not have crossed his lips, _Seimei,_ a prayer, a bond.

Ritsuka had bowed his head in want of hope when at length that call was answered, dark shadows flooding the doorway as the tall, ragged figure poured into the room, breath heaving, eyes searching. The presence moved them both as one, weary heads turning to meet that gaze, afire with wild sickness and guttering life.

"What are you doing?" Seimei demanded, half-collapsing to Soubi's side. For once his brother's pleas and sobbed apologies went untreated, Seimei's focus turned elsewhere, upon the fading strands of light that glittered within his fighter's heart.

_Repair,_ Ritsuka heard Seimei's mind chant in his faint echo of word-magic, _repair;_ but things that have been done are not so easily undone. Seimei's own thread a frazzled scrap of energy, it twitched limply on the floor at his side. Ritsuka, eyes newly opened, could see it all, and he was powerless to help it.

"Seimei," he implored, though Seimei might have been a ghost, "don't die." His small arms wound around Seimei's coat-sleeve, clinging tight. "Don't let Soubi...." His tail cringed on the ground as he crumpled into his brother, blood-sticky and sore to his heart.

Mustering, through his agony, the few scraps of compassion he possessed, Seimei turned his head away; so that, as he slumped to the ground, he might forever hide from Ritsuka the accusation in his eyes.


End file.
